


end of

by foxtrot77



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Canon-typical language, Chorus Arc, F/F, Fluff and Angst, injury mention
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-22 16:19:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13767867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxtrot77/pseuds/foxtrot77
Summary: For as long as Katie Jensen can remember, she has lived and breathed war. She tries not to get attached, tries to keep to herself, just wants to make it through this civil war in one piece.Then Danai "Volleyball" Carter barrels into her life.





	1. rooftop preamble

**Author's Note:**

> My dream has come true, I've finally started a fic for this pair. I even, like, planned it out. I never do that. In any case, enjoy!

Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every year. From the moment she was thrust into her mother’s arms, through grade school classes peppered with bomb safety drills, to the day she enlisted because the only functioning university shut down—

For as long as Katie Jensen can remember, she has lived and breathed war.

First it was the aliens, and now her own people, but after a while it’s all the same. Whether a Covvie’s shooting at her or her old classmates are dropping bombs on them, it makes no difference. Someone’s always trying to kill her, kill her friends, so the only thing she can do is kill them first.

Not that she can land most of her shots. Recruited by the New Republic, trained for a laughable amount of time, and then released onto the battlefront, Katie is not what one would call, _skilled._ She, like many others, is a soldier because it was the only option.

Katie doesn’t let this stop her, however. Any free time she has—which can last anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks—she spends reading, tinkering. With the miracle of modern technology, she has everything at her fingertips on the glitchy old data pad she scavenged—and fixed—during a supply run. She remembers having actual, physical books, but most of those have been burnt or are in abandoned buildings on enemy territory.

One of Katie’s favorite spots to read is outside. She doesn’t have a specific spot, really. the New Republic moves locations so frequently it would be impossible to pick one place.

Katie isn’t sure _why_ she loves being outside so much. By all accounts, she should be _afraid_ to be so exposed. But despite growing up being taught to despise it, it’s the only place she can really think—mostly because not many other people come out there, not unless they’re on patrol, and she’s generally far away from those troops.

It’s at one of these spots, on the roof of a decrepit old hospital the News have claimed for their base, bombs rumbling like thunder in the background, that Katie meets Danai.

She’s reading up on the research done so far on all the alien tech the New Republic has salvaged. There isn’t too much to go from, especially with Kimball giving most of it to Felix, but Katie can’t wait to get her hands on one of those weapons herself.

Katie is in the middle of considering a heist when the door twenty feet to her left bursts open, causing her to jerk so violently she nearly drops her datapad. The door crashes into the wall so hard it bangs shut again, but not before a New in pink-accented armor storms through it.

The New reaches up and yanks her helmet off, allowing a thick black braid to fall to the small of her back. How all that hair fits inside her helmet, Katie has no idea, but she’s impressed nonetheless.

Katie continues to watch, not yet making her presence known. She’s not known for her social skills, and from what she can tell, this New came here looking for privacy—she chucks her helmet at the ground and crosses her arms, biting down on her lower lip.

Should Katie cough? Or maybe take some exaggerated footsteps toward the door. The New’s only feet away… Katie wills the other soldier to turn and look her way, so she doesn’t have to be the one to break the silence.

She doesn’t.

It isn’t until the New looks like she’s about to start crying that Katie finally clears her throat.

“The fuck?” The New whips around, her braid swinging after her, _whapping_ lightly on her chest plate. She assumes a fighting stance, but when Katie throws her hands in the air, relaxes a little.

“Sorry,” the New says. “Thought I was the only one up here.” Her brows furrow, and she looks Katie up and down. “Why aren’t you wearing armor?”

“Umm…” Katie’s face goes hot. Good question. Historically, anyone caught outside—or inside, sometimes—without armor generally ends up dead. Katie has seen it happen, and you might think living half her life in a metal suit might lead her to make better decisions.

But you can’t feel the air with your helmet on.

The way Katie sees it, there are worse places to die than beneath the stars reading a good book.

“Whatever, that’s your prerogative I guess,” the New says, rolling her eyes. “You got a name?”

“Katie Jensen.”

“I’m Danai,” the New says. She moves her braid so it’s resting at her back again. “Danai Carter.”

The two of them stay like that for a few moments, Katie fidgeting with her data pad and trying not to stare at Danai, Danai concentrating on her nails, trying to look like she wasn’t upset about something.

“Do you want to sit?” Katie asks finally. She pats the cement next to her.

“Uh, I’m good, thanks,” Danai says. But rather than retreat through the door, she shuffles a little closer to where Katie’s sitting. “What are you doing up here?”

“Reading,” Katie replies. “It’s quiet up here.”

“Aside from the bombs, you mean?” Danai snorts, edging a bit closer as an explosion sounds off somewhere.

“I don’t mind that.” Katie shrugs. “As long as they aren’t, you know, falling on us.”

Danai raises an eyebrow but says nothing. She looks down at the landscape below, mostly indiscernible at this time of night, but on the horizon, you can see the orange glow from the fires.

_God, she must think I’m so weird_ , Katie thinks. _Maybe she has a point though_ , _who in their right mind would sit on a roof in the middle of a war zone without armor?_

“What are you doing up here?” Katie asks, hoping to salvage the conversation.

“Needed some air,” Danai answers. She sighs and closes the distance between herself and Katie, lowering herself to the ground into a seated position. “I’m not usually like this, really. This day is just so fucked.”

Katie nods. Why is she nodding? She has no idea what Danai is talking about.

“I’m sorry,” she says ( _stop_ nodding, _Katie!_ ).

Danai waves her hand. “It’s whatever. I’ll get over it, I always do.”

No one says anything for a while after that. Katie goes back to her reading, and Danai undoes her braid and runs her fingers through her hair. She starts piecing it back together, twirling and twisting her hair in a way Katie will never be able to do. Coordinated she is not, and her hair is too curly for that, so she chopped most of it off years ago.

Katie realizes she’s lost her place in the article she was reading and tears her eyes away from Danai’s fingers, moving lightning-quick as she finishes up her braid.

“What are you reading?” Danai asks, leaning over a bit to look over Katie’s shoulder.

Katie’s is on fire once more, and she can’t decide if it’s because she’s afraid Danai will think she’s weird for reading about alien tech or because Danai smells really, really nice.

“You know all of the ancient alien technology we salvage on supply runs and raids?” Katie asks. Danai nods. “I’m just reading, um, a research article on some of the weapons. There isn’t much, unfortunately, Kimball’s given most of them to that mercenary.”

“Felix,” Danai says. She wrinkles her nose at the name. Katie can’t say she doesn’t have the same reaction sometimes.

Felix has helped them a great deal, is probably the reason the New Republic is still alive and kicking, but Katie wouldn’t trust him if her life depended on it. And it isn’t just because he’s a mercenary—it’s more than that. There’s something chilling about his smile that gives Katie chills, a darkness, an emptiness in his eyes that makes her want to turn tail and run every time he looks her way.

“Felix,” Katie agrees.

“Sorry if I scared you earlier,” Danai says suddenly. “You know, when I threw my helmet and stuff.”

“That’s totally okay!” Katie says. “ _I’m_ sorry I waited so long to tell you I was here.”

“It’s all right,” Danai laughs. “Stopped me from screaming at the top of my lungs, which is probably good.”

“That bad?” Katie ventures.

Danai shrugs and looks down at her feet.

_Dammit, I blew it._ Katie fidgets in her seat.

“Avi, one of my squad members, someone I _trained_ , lost their arm today,” Danai says. She lets out a dark chuckle and continues, “Wasn’t even in battle. Ran into an old mine on a supply run. Medic says Avi’ll live, but the chances they’ll get a bionic replacement anytime soon are slim to none.” Danai sighs. “Avi was one of the best I’ve ever trained.”

“Was?” Katie raises an eyebrow.

“Huh?” Danai lifts her head to look at Katie.

“You mentioned them in the past tense,” Katie points out. “Avi’s still alive, you know. Isn’t that what the medic said?”

Danai purses her lips, eyes clouding over with an anger, a hatred Katie is far too familiar with.

“They’re alive, sure, but what are they supposed to do now?” she spits.

“Well… there _are_ other jobs besides, you know, being a soldier,” Katie says. “And, for what it’s worth, it’s not your fault Avi lost their arm. That could’ve happened to _anyone_. Even General Kimball.”

“Kimball wouldn’t put herself in danger like that by going on a supply run,” Danai snorts.

“You know what I mean,” Katie says quietly.

Danai lets out a heavy sigh, and Katie stifles a yawn. Checking the time on her datapad, she discovers she’s only going to get about 5 hours of sleep _if_ she’s lucky.

“Shit, is it seriously after midnight already?” Danai says, looking over Katie’s shoulder.

“Yeah, time flies when you’re having… fun?”

Danai chuckles and pushes herself to her feet. Katie follows suit, tucking her datapad under her arm. The bombs have subsided, so the only light reaching them now is from the stars. The New Republic wasn’t big on using electricity at night, lest they make themselves a glowing target for the Feds.

The two of them make their way to the door, and Katie feels a stab of panic that she’ll never see Danai again.

But it’s just her anxiety yammering in her ear. Losing someone in an army as small as the New Republic’s is laughable—if you can’t find someone, it’s because they’re literally hiding from you or they’re out on a mission. Katie will see Danai again.

She’ll make sure of it.

Danai stoops down to pick up her helmet and turns it over, but she doesn’t put it back on. Reaching for the door, she motions with her helmet for Katie to enter the base first.

“Uh, thank you!” Katie says, scurrying inside.

“Hey, I uh, I think I need a few more minutes alone up here,” Danai says, glancing over her shoulder.

“Oh, okay, of course.” Katie nods. She can’t help being disappointed that she won’t find out where in the base Danai is bunking. “It was nice talking to you.”

“Yeah same,” Danai replies with a smile. “It was great to meet you, Katie.”

_Oh, God._

“See you around?” Katie asks, her voice hitching a bit.  

“Sure, see you tomorrow,” Danai says with a nod, and she waves before letting the door swing shut.

Katie thinks she’s been standing in front of the closed door for at least a year before she says gives it a little half wave.

“Tomorrow,” she whispers.


	2. punching walls and taking names

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit shorter, but I wanted to introduce Volleyball a bit more.

No one who’s grown up on Chorus can say they’ve led a great life, but Danai “Volleyball” Carter has tried to make the best of it.

Shoved into baby boot-camp with her classmates at age thirteen? Danai told herself it was a great opportunity to make friends and, much more exciting for her, a great opportunity to play sports, particularly volleyball. Surprise surprise.

Enlisted by age sixteen and thrown into battle a week later? Perfect opportunity for Danai to build up work experience for when she got a real job. Maybe she would move up to a position that didn’t involve bullets whizzing past, and sometimes _thunk_ ing into, her armor. Not that she doesn’t enjoy her rep as Volleyball, the girl who can intercept a grenade midair and spike it back with an arm that puts Lieutenant Andersmith to shame.

No matter what this hell called Chorus throws at her, Danai keeps her glass half full and stands up when she falls.

And then Avi goes and gets their arm blown off.

At first Danai’s angry at Avi. She trained them better than that, how could they be so dumb as to get themselves into that situation? It wasn’t even a battle, it was a routine supply run. Danai spends a few hours fuming.

Then she realizes it’s not Avi she’s angry with, it’s this war.

Technically it’s _wars_ , plural, but Danai can only see it as one giant war that began long before she was born and has dominated her life since. And it doesn’t matter if you’re in armor or your civvies, trained for a few months or a few years, on a supply run or running headfirst into an ambush. Death doesn’t discriminate, and only the lucky ones make it out alive.

Danai is confused at first, not sure where all this anger came from. Death and war have been such a norm in her life—in everyone’s life—that she thought she was done dwelling on the past. Then she realizes she’s so angry _because_ all this is normal.

Danai thinks of Avi, only seventeen, and others, even younger. She thinks of herself, thrust into conflict the moment she entered the world, shoved into armor before she could even drive. She thinks of all this, and something inside her breaks. Boils over and sets her skin on fire. Her fingers clench into a fist, and she punches through the wall outside the med bay. It isn’t until later that she realizes how lucky she is they were stationed in an old hospital and not an actual base with thick metal walls.

Ripping her arm out of the wall in a cloud of dust and drywall, Danai storms off down the hall, ignoring her fellow soldiers as they call out after her.

She needs to get out. Not _out_ out, because where would she go? No, Danai needs some air, needs to breathe, be somewhere that isn’t clogged by thousands of apathetic, grief-stricken soldiers shuffling from one hospital bed to the next.

Danai can’t go to the front door; there will be guards _posted_ everywhere, and while they wouldn’t stop her from being out there, that would mean she’d have an audience. And she can’t have an audience, can’t have people seeing chipper Volleyball Carter lose her shit—her squad members already watched her send a fist through a wall, and that’s already too much.

So, Danai goes up.

When she bursts onto the rooftop, she’s greeted by the sounds of bombs exploding in the distance. Her heart stutters at first until she realizes the sounds are miles away.

Danai reaches up and pulls her helmet off, feeling the weight of her braid yank her neck back slightly as it tumbles down, drinking in the breeze as it cools her face.

Bitter, angry tears sting her eyes, and she’s about to let loose a scream when she hears a cough.

At first Danai wants to be annoyed by Katie Jensen, this bespectacled woman sitting— _without armor_ —on the rooftop behind her. She wants this awkward encounter to be their first—and their only one. But as the next couple hours slink by, mostly in silence, Danai finds herself enjoying Katie’s company.

Katie seems to _get it_. She doesn’t try to strike up a banal conversation about the weather, doesn’t ask where Danai is from. Instead, she turns her attention back to her data pad, allowing Danai the peace and quiet she came up here for.

Suddenly, Danai is spilling her guts, telling this stranger about Avi, and this stranger is trying to make her feel better, and then before they know it, it’s after midnight.

When Danai asks for some more alone time, Katie doesn’t push, and that’s when Danai decides that she wants to see Katie again.

“See you tomorrow,” Danai tells Katie Jensen before closing the door behind her.

Perched on the edge of the hospital rooftop, Danai twists her braid up so she can put her helmet back on. She lets out a sigh after she slides the helmet into place, already missing the fresh air. As she hops down and makes her way back to her bunk, she starts to get the feeling she gets almost every night: hope. Hope that she might wake up in the morning to find the war is over—or, even better, that it never happened at all and was just some horrible, twisted nightmare.

Danai waits for the hope to flicker out as reality sets in and reminds her that when she wakes up, nothing will have changed, but it doesn’t.

It isn’t until she climbs into her bunk that she realizes something _has_ changed.

Tomorrow, she gets to see Katie Jensen again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Still getting a feel for these characters.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Now that I've got the intro chapter done, I'm excited to work on the rest.
> 
> And yes, I totally chose the name Danai after Danai Gurira.


End file.
